In the Mail...

"Dear <Gnomey G, Dawg>,
We have received your application, and we look forward to reviewing it.
Thank you!"

That was kind of anticlimactic, don't you think? Not even a logo on the email--I'm including it just for fun and self-aggrandizement. But look! It’s off!

Bye bye, little Appie! I wish you well and am waving you off at the metaphorical train station. You will hang out the window up to your torso and look back shiny-eyed through the white steam rising from the tracks. I will raise a silk hanky to my face and pull down the lace on my black hat, determined that I shall never love again. Never, my love. You have been my companion and the vessel of my inspiration for so long.

God speed you along that bumpy road and into the hands of unknown reviewers who will judge you. You shall hold up well to their judging, Appie, but know this. No matter what happens, my love, you shall always possess a very important part of my soul—about 40 pages of it—and I will always judge you to be very promising. Psst. Remember to butter them up about that scholarship, right? You’re supposed to say, “Yes, and she reads to the blind and encourages the homeless to read literature as well as use it for warmth.”

I shall never love again… Well, until I send off the University of Iowa’s application later this week. Then it shall be odes to the bovine kings of the Midwest and the sound of corn stalks brushing together in the wind, a wind uninterrupted by hills…